This is Karunatilaka's second novel. It is a work of satire, set in a Sri Lanka beset by civil war.
Category: Books
How To Win the Booker Prize: Is There a Formula for ‘the Finest in Fiction’?
Examining the data from prize-winning Booker novels over the last 20 years yields some interesting results.
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë and the Truth About the ‘Real-life Heathcliff’
A new film about the author mixes biography with mythology and some dramatic reinvention.
The 5,000-Year History of Writer’s Block
Since the earliest days of the written word, students and scholars have pleaded for help from higher powers, a sure sign that writing and frustration always have – and …
Kamila Shamsie’s ‘Best of Friends’ Is an Affecting Novel of Friendship, Power and Ethics
'Best of Friends', the latest novel from Women’s Prize-winner Kamila Shamsie, explores complexities of power and ethics within an enduring female friendship.
Book Review: How Colonial Racism Built and Maintains Unjust Global Order
Alexander Barder’s book Global Race War traces the moves and developments of a global racial order on a grand scale.
Barry Hines’s ‘The Gamekeeper’ Is a Novel About How Capitalism Steals Nature From Us
Barry Hines is best known as author of 'Kestrel for a Knave', adapted for film by Ken Loach. His newly rereleased novel, 'The Gamekeeper', offers a searing portrait of …
Kate Millett’s ‘Flying’: Lesbians in the Eye of the Storm
Through its disorienting, vertigo-inducing prose, the book – which has been out of print for decades – is a time capsule of an era of popular movement.
We’re Still Living in Don DeLillo’s White Noise
Published in 1985, Don DeLillo’s White Noise depicted an America blinded by consumerism. Ahead of Netflix’s adaptation of the novel, it’s worth revisiting DeLillo’s masterpiece, which remains one of …
The Charm of Fiction
The fictional realm with its characters and situations provides me with a mechanism to cope with the challenges of the real world.